Receiving Love: Transform Your Relationship by Letting Yourself Be Loved [Paperback]

In an intelligent and insightful volume, Hendrix and Hunt, cocreators of Imago Relationship Therapy and coauthors of Getting the Love You Want, share their solution to a common relationship problem: the difficulty of accepting love, expressed by, for example, criticizing a gift from one's partner or spurning an intimate gesture. The authors, husband and wife, begin by talking painfully about how their own marriage nearly ended because Harville, despite obvious evidence to the contrary, didn't feel loved by his wife. As the authors note, there are many ways "to defend yourself against someone else's desire to encourage, help, or love you," whether because you overvalue your partner and feel unworthy of his or her love, or because you devalue that partner and see him or her as unworthy of giving love. The authors instruct readers to examine their childhood dynamics for unconscious influences on their view of relationships, such as uncomfortable feelings of self-rejection. And taking a page from Martin Buber, they also focus on what is "between" the I and Thou in a relationship, "the sacred space between two individuals" that can unite them or serve as a "dumping ground" for anger. These complicated concepts become clear as illustrated through in-depth looks at three heterosexual and same-sex couples. And through their Imago dialoguing technique, the authors also provide concrete steps to learn how to have a truly empathetic conversation that gets beneath the surface of a couple's problems. With this wise and sophisticated book, readers can learn to receive love and, in doing so, "reclaim [their] own desires, dreams and abilities."
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"Intelligent and insightful...wise and sophisticated."

-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Harville Hendrix has illuminated the paths to loving, long-lasting relationships in his New York Times bestsellers Getting the Love You Want and Keeping the Love You Find. Now, with coauthor and wife Helen LaKelly Hunt, he brings us to a new understanding about one of the most complicated issues facing couples today:

Receiving Love

Many men and women know how to give love, but many more undermine their relationships by never having learned how to accept it. We don't always realize the ways in which we reject appreciation and affection, help and guidance from our romantic partners. And, according to Hendrix and Hunt, until we are able to understand the meaning behind our behavior, our relationships stand to suffer. Ask yourself:

Are you reluctant to tell your partner what you really want or need?

When you do get what you've asked for, do you still feel dissatisfied?

Is it difficult for you to accept kind gestures, gifts, or compliments from your partner?

If you answered yes to any of the above, this book is for you. With Receiving Love, you can learn how to break the shackles of self-rejection -- which likely began in childhood, when our caretakers unintentionally failed to nurture us -- and embrace real intimacy. Drawing on their renowned expertise, the wide clinical experience of Imago therapists, and their own personal experience as a married couple, the authors offer detailed, sensitive advice on how to turn a relationship between two well-meaning yet misunderstood individuals into a true, everlasting partnership.

Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., a clinical pastoral counselor and co-creator of Imago Relationship Therapy, has more than thirty-five years' experience as an educator, public lecturer, and couples' therapist.

Helen LaKelly Hunt, Ph.D. used her education in psychology to help develop the Imago process as well as to support gender equity -- for which she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. She is in great demand as a public speaker.

Chapter 1: Nothing's Ever Good Enough

You're never happy with anything I do. I feel like giving up.

When it comes to love relationships, things are often not what they seem. The common wisdom is that romantic relationships would stay happy if people did a better job of giving to each other. But that's not what we've discovered. We've found that many people need to do a better job of receiving the gifts their partners are already offering. It's surprising how often the compliments, appreciations, and encouragements of a well-intentioned partner make no dent in the armor of an unhappy partner. The compliments are brushed off, the votes of confidence are discounted, and the words of encouragement fall on deaf ears. Why does this happen? And why does this universal but unexplored quirk of human nature carry with it implications for the health of marriage as an institution and the quality of our lives in community with others?

Let's begin with the couple who first inspired our odyssey into the hidden complications of receiving love. After we had been working with George and Mary for several months, George finally understood that Mary wanted more affection. He learned to listen to how she wanted it expressed: gentle tone of voice, looking into her eyes, light kisses on the lips, and a hug twice a day. He worked on it until he got it just right, and then he started giving her these expressions of affection every day as a gift.

What was Mary's reaction? She rejected him. As a separate knower, she had taken in the information that George loved her, but she didn't feel it.

"It's perfect, but you're only doing it because Harville is guiding you." Or, "You never did it before, so I don't believe that you mean it when you do it now." To some degree these objections make sense. Yes, the therapist did help, so maybe it doesn't feel completely genuine. The behavior is new so there may be some distrust.

But after weeks of this we confessed that her continuing resistance puzzled us. Wasn't George doing exactly what Mary said she wanted? She answered, "Yes, but it doesn't feel right."

We asked Mary to pause and go inside her body for a moment and pay attention to her sensations and feelings: "Take your time and re-create what happens when George shows you affection just the way you want it."

She closed her eyes and waited. Then she said, "I get anxious."

Although there's nothing very startling about this scenario, it was our entrée into a whole new way of understanding why some relationships are stubbornly resistant to healing. At first we didn't realize we were seeing the tip of a problem that had deep roots in the ground of personal identity and relationships. After working with several more couples in crisis, however, we began to wonder whether praise-resistant behaviors in partnerships might be both more common and more significant than we thought.

A Broken "Receiver"

Inside very different relationships we began to notice that the same puzzling barrier to receiving love was leading to frustration and in some cases toward divorce. What is happening when a willing partner is able (sometimes after much coaching) to express caring and admiration, and it isn't received? When one partner is finally able to say and do the right things, why doesn't the relationship always get better and the other partner always get stronger? Answering these questions will take us deep into the heart of the power that close relationships have to shape and reshape those traits and characteristics that make us distinctly who we are.

In each of the three marriages discussed below, one partner learned how to give appreciation and encouragement to the other, but still ran into resistance. Apparently there was some sort of invisible wall surrounding the intended recipient that made it difficult for gestures of love to penetrate.

Stan and Suzanne

Stan and Suzanne live in the same neighborhood they both grew up in, surrounded by old houses that are occupied by friends, in-laws, and cousins. Stan's quietness and his wiry physique give him an air of competence. It's easy to imagine him managing details and solving problems in his job as a building and grounds supervisor. His capacity to hold facts and figures in his head and coolly analyze problems is matched by Suzanne's capacity to feel the emotions of every single person involved with the problem. When they work together on an issue, they balance each other out. But when they're at odds, Stan's need to stay with the facts and Suzanne's need to stay with the emotions add up to a lot of miscommunication.

Suzanne is short and slight, but her personality is outgoing. She was a stay-at-home mom until their twin sons entered first grade, and then she became an insurance clerk. With all the creative housekeeping she put into it, Suzanne loved staying home. Cooking from scratch, sewing curtains, canning her own vegetables -- even though these tasks didn't really need to be done the way she did them, she felt good maintaining the domestic standards she'd been raised with.

After twelve years of marriage, Stan and Suzanne entered therapy because she was sure that he was having an affair. Infidelity was the only way she could explain her husband's gradual but steady retreat from their marriage. Despite Stan's heartfelt denials that he was not involved with anyone else, Suzanne could not be convinced. After a difficult year and what Suzanne described as "a mini-breakdown in the supermarket," they decided to get some help.

Suzanne told the therapist: "When we were first dating, Stan followed me around like a puppy....But the truth is that we've had problems ever since we married. We're so different. And we don't know how to talk about what's bothering us. Now, we either fight or avoid each other as much as possible. Stan comes home late during the week, and on the weekend he goes fishing with his brother and his buddies whenever he can. Recently, one of our sons asked me if I was a single mother."

Stan winced when he heard Suzanne say this. It was painful for him to hear how absent he was from his sons' lives. He loved his family. He said he was willing to put in the effort to make things better, but surprisingly, he also said he wasn't sure anything would help. His wife was hard to please. In fact, he confessed that he secretly thought of her as "not good enough" Suzanne. He didn't like thinking that way, but twelve years of marriage had taught him to expect Suzanne's general dissatisfaction with the way everybody did everything. Suzanne was a perfectionist, which was okay, but she was also controlling, which was hard to take. Even though he was considered a master at fixing things at work, he learned not to offer his services around the house. He didn't want to be criticized for choosing this color over that or for using one particular material when he should have used another.

Unfortunately, Suzanne was also critical of the gifts people gave her. In the early years of their marriage, Stan would sometimes pick out small presents to bring home. But after a while, he began to tense up for her inevitable response: "The thing wrong with this is..." And then she would explain about the wrong color, the wrong size, the extravagance, or some other flaw he hadn't noticed. They would have to find the receipt and return the items to the store where Suzanne usually chose something more to her liking. When she told him, "You shouldn't have," she meant it. And, eventually, he no longer did.

Despite his discouragement, though, Stan was willing to work with the therapist and Suzanne in exploring these issues. Both of them said they wanted to make things better. Over the next few months, they were able to follow the suggestions that are part of Imago Relationship Therapy for creating a conscious partnership. They learned to tell each other what they wanted and needed. They learned how to talk and listen to each other in a way that made them both feel heard and validated. They even took that last, difficult step of trying to fulfill each other's requests.

The most significant request came from Suzanne. She said she needed Stan to be more involved in their marriage and parenting their sons. When she told him how lonely she felt, he agreed to make some changes. He told her he would keep his Saturdays free so he could spend time with the boys. And he asked her if she wanted to set aside one evening a week as a date night for the two of them alone. When he made the offer, she was thrilled. This was exactly what she wanted!

She eagerly anticipated Stan's first at-home Saturday with the boys. As the days passed, though, she got more and more grouchy. By Saturday morning, she was downright anxious. She couldn't pinpoint the problem exactly, but it looked like the closer she got to having her desires fulfilled, the edgier she got.

After a month on Stan's new schedule, the boys were happy, but Suzanne was full of complaints, and Stan was exasperated. She acted as if he still wasn't doing enough or wasn't doing the right thing, and he felt truly burned by her lack of appreciation.

To see why he felt that way, we have to hear what happened when Stan started giving Suzanne what she'd asked for. This conversation took place in the therapist's office:

Therapist: So, let's get into a dialogue. Who would like to go first? How did your first week with the new behaviors work out?

Stan: I would like to go first. (He turns toward the therapist.) I don't know what to say. I did what I said I would do, and I can't see that it made any difference. (The therapist redirects him to Suzanne, whom he addresses.) You're still...I don't know...unhappy. On Saturday, I didn't go to the game with Bud so I could take the boys to practice.

Suzanne: (She repeats what Stan has just said to show him that she has heard and understood.) So you think I'm still unhappy, even though you canceled your own game so you could be with the boys. Did I get i...